The Cyclo Diaries
Posted: March 17, 2012 Filed under: koto, Movies, Reflections, Stories, transport, travel | Tags: cyclo, extreme charity, Hanoi, ho chi minh city 1 Comment »
Filmed in 2005, this has been a long time coming but it’s a great watch – at an hour in length it’s worth downloading in advance and sitting down in the evening with a glass of something to take it in.
In short it’s the tale of two Australian tour guides who decide to try and ride a cyclo from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. The two guys in question are Adam and Marty, and they did the trip to raise money for KOTO, where I happened to be working at the time.
At the time the future of KOTO hung in the balance, we desperately needed new premises for the restaurant and there were quite a few times we didn’t think we’d make it. For the cyclo-ing and the financial assistance Adam and Marty were superheroes to the KOTO kids.
For my part I organised the send off. I also kept their trip blog updated from base camp. Then, when they were close to the end I caught up with them in Mui Ne, and dashed ahead of them to Ho Chi Minh City. A reception had been organised at a school and I turned up on their doorstep, with a banner I somehow had managed to get made locally, and we waited for the guys to show up.
A great day. Great film. Great guys. Lovely to finally see it.
Like this:
Drink responsibly till dawn with Heineken
Posted: December 1, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: drinking, heineken, ho chi minh city 5 Comments »Run a blog and you get some odd requests but this is odder than most. It’s hard to know where to start…
Hello,
I’m working with a team that’s about to kick off a global campaign for Heineken, and I’d really like your help.
To encourage responsible drinking, we’re taking an approach that I believe will interest your followers/readers; namely the campaign promotes the benefits of responsible drinking rather than emphasising the negatives of drinking too much.
We’ve created a TV ad and placed beautiful custom-designed sofas in major cities so that people around the world can enjoy their own sunrise moment. Although the sofa locations are not being publicised until Dec 12, we’re sharing it with you to save you the effort of hunting them down: San Francisco, Ho Chi Minh, London and Rio.
What’s in it for you?
Our Facebook page has 4.5 million fans, and any tweets you submit will appear on our interactive Facebook map. Plus, the best contributors will be retweeted and posted on the Heineken Facebook Wall for all our fans to admire.
So what are we asking for?
- · Tweet your contribution by 11 December – just be sure to use the hashtag #mysunrise.
- · Your tweet can either show a sunrise-henge (a sunrise framed by a structure, object or person – anything that frames the sunrise in an interesting, entertaining or spectacular way). Or if writing’s more your thing, tweet us a sunrise story or moment. Anything of wit or wisdom will do, as long as it fits within 140 well-chosen characters – and be sure to geo-tag the tweet with your location, so we can place it on the map.
I must stress that this campaign is not about selling more beer. Our intention is to promote responsible drinking during the festive season, because if you drink in moderation you can see out the night and celebrate the sunrise in style.
On 12 December the full campaign will be launched, but we’d love you to get involved before that date. We’re keen to get as many tweets and posts as possible, so if there’s anything else you need, please let me know. It would be good to talk.
Thanks!
